Tesla Earnings: Live-Blog Recap

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --
Tesla Motors(TSLA)
reported fourth-quarter results after the stock-market close Wednesday. With the attention surrounding the Model S test drive by The New York Times(NYT) , results drew plenty of attention.

Tesla reported a fourth-quarter non-GAAP loss of 65 cents per share on $306 million in revenue. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were looking for a loss of 53 cents per share on $298.2 million in revenue.

The company gave its outlook for the first quarter and 2013. For the full year, Tesla expects to deliver about 20,000 Model S units, with 4,500 of them in the first quarter. Tesla expects first-quarter gross margins to be in the mid-teens and rise toward its target of 25% in the second half of the year. On the earnings call, CEO Elon Musk wouldn't talk about revenue for 2013, but noted that people will react positively to it, and then lay the ground work for 2014 as well.

In the first quarter, Tesla expects to be "slightly positive net income, on a non-GAAP basis. We also expect to be near breakeven on cash flow from operations." Musk wouldn't firmly commit to profitability in the second quarter, but hinted at it on the call. "I do think we'll be profitable in Q2 and subsequent quarters as well," Musk said on the earnings call.

John Broder, a reporter for the Times, wrote a story saying Tesla's Model S electric car stalled in cold weather and ran out of energy, prompting Musk to defend the car and his company, going so far as to call the review "fake."

Musk proceeded to take to the Internet, writing a blog post, providing several nuggets of information from the car's data to prove that Broder was incorrect in his assessment. Included in Musk's post was the fact that Broder never ran out of energy.

"As the State of Charge log shows, the Model S battery never ran out of energy at any time, including when Broder called the flatbed truck," Musk penned in the blog.